"The Linux of social media" – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-linux-of-social-media-how-livejournal-pioneered-then-lost-web-blogging/ <comment><USER2> I will unabashedly say that the "Livejournal era" was my favorite era of the internet to date.

You can still blog in 2019, obviously, on LJ or elsewhere. But your friends aren't going to _read_ it. That's why LJ worked: it was both _a blogging platform_ and _an aggregated feed of your LJ friends ' blog posts,_ and you all had a more or less equal ability to comment and respond to each other. Crucially, LJ had enough marketshare to make it feasible that you might have a reasonable number of friends that used it too -- but it wasn't designed to make it trivial for your coworkers or neighbors to find you on there.

LJ felt like a quiet corner of the internet, shared by myself and a few dozen friends.

Broadly speaking that's obviously kind of what Facebook and other social networks do as well. But they do it an extremely noisy, public, and algorithmically-distorted way that... well, to put it diplomatically, winds up being something quite different. Those platforms have their uses, but if you attempt to use them as a relatively noise-free blogging platform you are really attempting to ice-skate uphill.

Of today's social platforms, Twitter probably comes the closest to providing some of what was cool about LJ.

<comment><USER3> LJ had a much more pleasant culture in terms of interacting with strangers. I'd call that an artifact of the number of weirdos, along with the pre-Eternal September Internet world in general. The text orientation also helped. There were also a lot of highly knowledgeable people: professors and the like.

<comment><USER4> Eternal September started in 1993, according to wikipedia. It was definitely in common usage by 1995. LiveJournal started in 1999.

I get what you were trying to say, but you used the wrong signpost. The web remained a relatively civil place until the mid-00s; there were trolls and astroturfers, but they were mostly contained. The real culture shift happened with social networks and mobile, in the late '00s, when even people who couldn't operate a desktop started to be online 24/7.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a better term for that late '00s phenom? Because that really _was_ an Eternal September shift, although not in September, and not in '93.

<comment><USER4> I think most people would just use "the advent of social media" or simply "before/after social media". It might be cliché, but looking at the dates, that's when things changed. FB started getting traction outside schools in 2005, Twitter appeared in mid-2006, the iPhone landed in 2007, and by the end of the decade the participants and tone of online conversations had changed irreparably.

(And it's 2019 already? Damn, I feel so old...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Although this article brings up Dreamwidth it doesn't actually describe the full relationship behind DW and LJ. When LJ banned adult fandom fanfic, the group moved to DW and also a separate fanfiction site ArchiveOfOurOwn(AO3). AO3 in particular is part of an organization that pushes real legal change for the freedom of derivative works. LJ did not have this explicit in its creation and so fanfic writers universally went elsewhere regardless of their adult or non-adult production.

(This also became the moving of many scifi/fantasy writers in general, as the community is surprisingly small and word travels fast.)

<comment><USER6> Adult fan fiction, though.

It's... It's just...

Honestly, it makes _a lot_ of sense to eschew the genre, no matter your stance on legality, free speech or whatever.

<comment><USER7> I'm not interested in adult fiction or fan fiction, but I'd still be interested in hearing what you think that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> LJ gave us OpenID, Memcached, MogileFS and Gearman. I was a fan of all of them. Such amazing technologies. OpenID specifically was (to me) such a BIG idea that I was convinced it would take over authentication systems everywhere. On the practical side I was a huge Memcached fan and used Gearman quite a bit too. It really expanded for me what was possible with PHP. Super nostalgic for that time. It felt like a new frontier.

Standards for blogging API's also blew my mind. Metaweblog and Blogger API was pretty awesome.

<comment><USER9> I still think OpenID is better than OAuth. OpenID was federated, and you could easily set it up on your own server. And OAuth has become just 'Sign in with Facebook' and 'Sign in with Google'.

<comment><USER10> You might be interested in [https://indieauth.net/](https://indieauth.net/)

We support indieauth in vouch [https://github.com/vouch/vouch- proxy](https://github.com/vouch/vouch-proxy) and have a few people that do use that auth flow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems that blogging for the sake of blogging has been mostly lost, to be honest. I miss the time when blogs were more than self promotion and content marketing.

<comment><USER12> Feels like the idea of doing a hobby for the sake of it seems to have been lost in general. Everything's always got to be about 'making it your main job' or 'turning it into a million dollar business' or what not.

And yeah, I miss that too. Especially given how much more entertaining it often is to read a post by an interested expert than by someone trying to make a quick buck.

<comment><USER13> I think the invention of "like" and "thumbs up" has ruined the internet. Instead of doing things for fun it's too easy to get sucked into chasing approval.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In Russia the popularity of livejournal has also dropped with the advent of Facebook, and there it has nothing to do with obscene fan fiction. Facebook has just found a more addictive model with a lower entry barrier. On the bright side we now have Telegram, which allows for a similar communication style, just without comments (which is IMO a good thing as well).

<comment><USER15> Strongly disagree. The reason people moved from livejournal is simply company policies, they messed with peoples freedoms. People got used to be able to say whatever they want and rely on ratings by popularity, but LJ excluded some political bloggers from public ratings and limited their abilities to grow. The audience didn't like it and started to look around for alternatives. In addition at that time LJ was already heavily outdated in terms of design and usability.

Summing up it's not because facebook was better, it's because livejournal got worse, and secondarily forgot to become better technically.

<comment><USER14> Yes, there were some reasons for dissent, but still most people chose to migrate to Facebook, and not to Dreamwidth or Blogspot, which were closer alternatives to LJ.

<comment><USER15> If i remember correctly nobody advertised those platforms at that time in Russia, so most people had a simple choice, you leave LJ because it sucks and you choose most popular alternative with sane audience, for most ex LJ users it was Facebook imho

<comment><USER16> In my own case, I moved from LJ to Facebook not because of any change in LJ policies but because I found myself naturally gravitating to Facebook. More of my friends were on Facebook, the UI was better for social stuff, and I found that I was more interested in writing shorter status updates than I was in the longer blogs that were popular on LJ.

Over time, I posted on Facebook more and more and LJ less and less. It got to the point where I'd go months and eventually years without touching LJ.

I think the last time I posted anything was in 2009. The last time I touched it at all was in 2011 or so when I had a phone interview with someone, and the interviewer said he saw my LJ and he made jokes about it. So after the call, I found a script to mark every post on my entire LiveJournal as friends-only, ran it, and threw a line in my bio saying that everything in there is years out of date, and that was that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Rather frustratingly, LiveJournal managed to leak my real password and email address at some point. The password was only used on that domain (which is how I knew they leaked it), but I'm _still_ getting bitcoin scam attempts and so far 100% have been on the email address attached to that leaked password: [https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/anatomy- of-...](https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/anatomy-of-a-scam- and-livejournals-lost-passwords/)

If I'd known it was leakable, I would've used a one-account email address as well as a one-account password. The scams themselves are getting quite disturbing.

</comment><comment><USER18> As for the headline, I don't know what Linux lost. Loss implies that you had it at some point, but Linux never really had the desktop, (sadly), so it could not have lost it.

It still dominates in the server, supercomputer & embedded markets.

<comment><USER19> I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple _doesn 't_ migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX.

In the late 90s I got so worn out with stability issues inherent to Win98 on laptops that I switched to the Mac, largely because a co-worker was using one and I could SEE how much it didn't crash, and how sleep actually WORKED, and how good the hardware was, etc. Since my job at the time was primarily project management, and I lived in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, I had no compatibility issues, and my work life got better.

Then the dot-com crash happened and I found myself coding again as a freelancer on web projects, all of which were LAMP-stack efforts. My Mac had shipped with OS 9, but by then I'd upgraded to OS X -- which could run the same frameworks we were using on the server. My dev environment was my actual laptop, which was GREAT.

I feel like that was the moment that the Mac pulled in a lot of very technical and very influential people, with good reason. If OS X hadn't happened, I suspect desktop Linux would be further along because lots of people like me would've been kinda forced into it ca. 2001-2002 instead of having the Apple option.

<comment><USER20> > I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to > the FreeBSD-based OSX. (…) > I feel like that was the moment that the Mac > pulled in a lot of very technical and very influential people, with good > reason

You can look right now at what's happening to these very technical people. The ones I know are giving up on Apple and moving to Microsoft instead: because the WSL subsystem works, and the keyboard has most of the keys they want.

We are living in interesting times!

<comment><USER21> WSL certainly helps as the same or very similar toolchain works everywhere, but what does the keyboard have to do with anything?

Any keyboard issues w/ Apple are hardware reliability concerns, but that's really a separate issue, I think.

<comment><USER22> > what does the keyboard have to do with anything?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/59pipx/app...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/59pipx/apple_touch_bar_for_developers_will_look_like_this/)

<comment><USER21> Has anyone ever tried to measure share among the various text editors on the Mac? The vi/emacs crowd makes a bunch of noise because it messes with their workflows, but the rest of us just soldier on with BBEdit/VSCode/Sublime/etc.

<comment><USER22> Funny thing is, with proper use of touch typing you wouldn't need the top row: Esc is either Ctrl-[, or some map it to Caps Lock. And hardcore Vim users are definitely supposed to be deep in touch typing. So this 'noise' is actually just people making fun of Vim's idiosyncrasies in light of the touch bar thing.

Emacs, afaik, doesn't need the top row at all.

<comment><USER21> Touch typing would be OK, if Apple's keyboards (going back into the 90's) didn't suck, because flat keys are _terrible_. Almost all keyboards have gone this way save for the mechanical nerds, so I might take another look at that soon. Emacs is powerful, but Stallman's love of Ctrl prefixed commands and hatred for mice make it a challenge and Vi's key combinations are obtuse as hell (compounded by Apple's hardware).

I'm more than happy with a real Mac application like BBEdit, but it's interesting to see how the other half lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Blogging has transformed and moved. Twitter is a kind of blogging--only more concise, and consequently, much easier. Facebook, as well as Linkedin, may scratch the same itch as blogging. And, the bonus is that your content is much more visible and accessible.

Even if you post a link to your blog on linkedin, maybe 5-10% of people will click it, from my experience.

This is mostly a response to the comments, saying that blogging for sake of blogging has been lost. I don't think it's been lost; it's moved and transformed into social media.

<comment><USER24> Twitter is the comments section most media outlets have removed. Media likes it because it's usually all about them, and screencapping it often makes their jobs easier (aka "look at this twitter thread" between X and Y). Otherwise, it's disqus with a different distribution model.

Blogs are doing just fine. LJ simply became a Russian blog platform rather than and English language one. It did have some social media aspects back in the day, but it assumed a couple of standard deviation higher IQ (or at least attention span) in its users, favoring long form posts with lots of imagery. It didn't become a disgusting FB megacorp because it didn't cater to the lowest common denominator, or hire people to make it addictive. FWIIW Brad did fine.

Tools like this should be the goal, not evil garbage like FB.

<comment><USER25> _Media likes it because it 's usually all about them, and screencapping it often makes their jobs easier_

I hate how true this can be.

"The internet is _furious_ at celebrity"

Article sources the entirety of two mildly annoyed nobodies on twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "At the time, Six Apart was a small software company best known for authoring the blogging software TypePad."

Oh my. Is Movable Type really _that_ forgotten by history?

<comment><USER27> I suspect it's just inaccurate journalism... in the big picture, Movable Type had a much larger impact than TypePad. And Six Apart wasn't exactly a tiny company; at peak it had over 200 employees between offices on three continents. Not huge by today's standards, but not small for a post-dotcom- burst startup.

I worked for Six Apart in NYC a few years after the LJ sale. By that point, Six Apart HQ (in SF) was nearly entirely focused on hosted platforms, and basically left Movable Type to the satellite offices. I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but I could certainly imagine some of the former LJ folks interviewed here may have commented about all the resources being moved to TypePad. So perhaps TypePad kept naturally coming up in these convos, and who knows if the article author had any prior familiarity with Six Apart or MT.

MT was such an amazingly powerful static site generator. Honestly I'd still use it today if it wasn't Perl-based and license-encumbered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If anyone misses this sort of interaction, I suggest looking into the Patchbay client for scuttlebutt ([https://www.scuttlebutt.nz](https://www.scuttlebutt.nz)). It's easily described as a P2P/decentralized version of LJ.

</comment><comment><USER29> > LiveJournal exodus seemed to be triggered in part by actions like the mass > banning of several figures in the X-rated Harry Potter fanfiction community > under pressure from religious groups (ostensibly for writing erotic stories > about underage characters).

Well sure, but a large part of the regular userbase (not religious folk) were not comfortable with adults writing pornography about fictional children, and having a LiveJournal became not cool because of that.

<comment><USER30> > _Well sure, but a large part of the regular userbase (not religious folk) > were not comfortable with adults writing pornography about fictional > children, and having a LiveJournal became not cool because of that._

I seriously doubt that. It might have made it not "safe" for some small circles, but hardly "not cool" to the coolness-seeking people. Teenagers for example and younger people could hardly care about that.

(There's also the fact that you very easily skip all those. I read several LJ blogs religiously (e.g. ClickOpera), but have not chanced on the HP fan-fic ones at all).

<comment><USER31> >I seriously doubt that. It might have made it not "safe" for some small circles, but hardly "not cool" to the coolness-seeking people. Teenagers for example and younger people could hardly care about that.

Sites can get a negative reputation for being the place where certain strange and distasteful fanbases gather. In time, outsiders might come to identify the site with these groups inside of it making the place undesirable. Compare Tumblr.

<comment><USER30> I think Tumblr lost most of its mojo and following in the exactly inverse scenario: when they (recently) said "no more porn". The backslash was big...

<comment><USER27> Numerically, that's incorrect. Tumblr includes posts-per-day stats on their /about page, and banning adult content was a drop of about 20-25% of posting volume. While that's a big drop for something that was an overnight change, it's still dwarfed by the drop comparing current stats vs heyday stats of years back.

At peak, going by public posts/day stats, Tumblr was about 5x larger than at present. It was more of a slow bleed than a sudden drop-off though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I loved LJ and had a paid account for several years. I quit shortly after they got bought out and started shoving ads in everyone's face.

</comment><comment><USER33> [https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/Scree...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/Screen-Shot-2019-01-01-at-7.20.58-PM.png)

The guy just used archive.org and posted a version with broken css as if it was a regular past screenshot of the site.

<comment><USER34> I don't think many people keep screenshots of their livejournals around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Pioneered? VirtualKid had blogs for their user base back in 1997. I'm sure others were around even earlier.</comment>


The budget breakdown of a 34-year-old who makes $150,000 in NYC - <AUTHOR> https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/heres-the-budget-breakdown-of-a-34-year-old-who-makes-dollar150000/ar-BBPHz6X?ocid=spartanntp <comment><USER2> How are you single, healthy, and making 6 figures and only putting away 10-15% of your monthly income? I make less than half that and I can save 40-50% living in a similarly priced area.

<comment><USER3> _" primarily as a brand consultant"_

The kind of person that would be a brand consultant would be required by the internal sense of price = quality = social status. For example: _" I buy a purse for $200 and I'm like, 'Where am I going to make $500 tomorrow?'"_

Personality-bashing aside, looking at the numbers:

$150k annual = $12.5k / month, budget = $4,100 / month, Travel of $15k annually = $1.25k / month. Overall this leaves ~$7k / month ($84k per year) as "everything else" money.

She could easily put away 50% to fund early retirement, but she obviously prioritises differently to you and I :)

She obviously works hard and she does plenty of charity work, so she's almost unquestionably an extrovert and therefore not comfortable 'living the quiet life'. Given the fact she's run the numbers and money is obviously important to her, I'd say she's much more likely to be actively making choices rather than just passively following societal norms.

<comment><USER4> > What Ilieva makes each year varies but, in a typical year she brings in > between $80,000 and $150,000

So $150k at the top, and much less than that is possible. Who knows the frequency of how often it's $80k, and how often it's $150k.

I don't think your numbers include taxes, which if you're self employed, are higher than if you are working for a company (where they pay those payroll taxes for you). So there's federal taxes, social security (both parts) and medicare, and state taxes (for NY). There's also apparently an additional income tax for working in NYC.

[https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-tax- calculator](https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-tax-calculator)

This says $150k might be more like $100k after taxes. Then taking out the monthly expenses (let's just say $60k), and travel ($15k) and retirement ($15k) and there's only about $10k left over on the best of years, with no unexpected expenses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> $700 for a beautiful apartment in a Kansas City superb surrounded by a forest now sounds like I'm getting a great deal.

<comment><USER6> And how many really cool/new/different restaurant choices do you have?

And how many companies are around you which offer interesting jobs?

<comment><USER7> Is restaurant variety really that big a deal? Quality grocery nearby would be more important for me - my prime concern, actually.

Living in a Kansas city superb could be cool, if those nearby forests offered parks and trails and such. _shrugs_

<comment><USER6> As strange as it might sound, at least for me it is.

Quality grocery nearby is more important to me for sure but that is also way closer in a big city. At least here in munich.

I can only watch movies in OV (original version in my case mostly english), go out to many different restaurants, go to many shows, congresses, using public transport etc.

And at least for me, my job opportunities are way better. My carrier would be none if i would have not moved.

I do not know how it looks in NYC And if i would not really use the citys advantages because i can't afford it, i would move out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It blows my mind how people spend so little on food. Any sort of meat on a regular basis can quickly surpass $50/week. My wife and I budget $150/wk for food, with some weeks coming in under budget admittedly.

Maybe these types of budgets never factor in snacks or coffee shops?

If you add any sort of fresh meat then the prices go up even more. I would love to buy grass fed beef and pasture raised chicken but I can't justify the price when I have $70k worth of student loans to pay off.

</comment><comment><USER9> $2,400 for a 2b apartment in upper Manhattan? I want that apartment!

</comment><comment><USER10> I really have to get my food budget under control. I'm spending about 1200 on groceries and 500 eating out every month. Everything else is fine but the food kills me.

I think I buy too much fruit.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is about how much one would spend in San Francisco as well, if not more with commute costs.</comment>


Jobs' Health Message Makes Little Sense, Experts Say - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/stevejobshealth.html <comment><USER2> Steve Jobs is rich and smart and gets things done. When he says he makes something his number one priority, that means he's doing something serious about it. When he sees a doctor, it's not going to be the same sort of doctor who does liposuction with a trowel in a warehouse. When he has tests, they wont be a $2.50 chemistry set.

He will see real experts. They will expertly advise him. Professionals will say things like the two people at the end of the linked article - "I have no knowledge of his condition and will not comment" and "Asked whether armchair diagnoses are reasonable or productive, Skarulis replied, 'Unfortunately, no'" and "agreed with Lustig's assessment of Jobs' statement as _insufficiently detailed to merit speculation_ "

Real experts will not take a deliberately vague brief announcement to the general public, with no medical history or test results, and start second guessing the doctor(s) involved and implicitly accusing the CEO of a very successful company of telling untruths, and 'real' journalists would not take this rumourmongering gossipy timewasting wordflood and submit it as news, and 'real' reputable news company editors would not approve it for worldwide publication under their once good name.</comment>


Anger as US internet privacy law scrapped - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39427026 <comment><USER3> I remember being so excited as a kid when I started getting drawn into the computing age. I remember when the internet seemed like mankind's next step forward. I remember being excited about so many new trends, social media, the age of everything being free on the internet.

Then, everyone else caught up. Now it's just like watching television. A bunch of companies vying to get you to buy something at any cost, and taking that strategy further than they ever did before the internet.

Now, I just want to leave my phone at home and go ride my bike. I rarely feel like developing anything anymore, haven't done a side project in over a year. Whenever I get motivated to do things like that I see shit like this and it just feels hopeless. There's no way to defeat these companies, because they are full of people struggling to get ahead and doing their cog's part in the machine that ultimately does this to us all.

<comment><USER4> > There's no way to defeat these companies

What about working to elect representatives who will pass privacy legislation?

<comment><USER5> Problem with that being:

If they're not corrupt(-ed) before entering office, they most certainly will be through lobbying (aka "generous donations") once they enter office. Exceptions to this rule are certainly rare and seem to only surface ahead of elections and vanish -again- as soon as they are elected.

<comment><USER6> Correct. Everything can be solved with more layers of abstaction though. Elect people who will reform lobbying and campaign finance (even if it takes an amendment), eliminate gerrymandering, and fix the other beyond broken parts of the political process. Then maybe we can consider policy.

If even that proves impossible, well, then I guess it would have to come down to violent revolution.

<comment><USER7> Nope, violent revolution produces worse regimes than what they replace. Emigrate instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before anyone races in with a suggestion to use a VPN service, I STRONGLY suggest that you consider running your own self-hosted server instead. There is a great set of Ansible scripts to do just that right here:

[https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo)

<comment><USER9> So now it's at the point where we need to be running our own self-hosted servers? As a European I find it weird that America land of Silicon Valley does not fight for important issues like this. Can anyone explain?

<comment><USER10> The companies doing this are not Silicon Valley companies. They're old phone companies, more or less, that became internet companies because they owned all the cable that was already laid.

And of course the politicians passing this don't give a shit about the Silicon Valley culture or ideals; Republicans care about profits for corporations because that means more fat donations to them.

<comment><USER11> Silicon Valley culture of _ideals_ ?

No offense, but that's the most ludicrous statement I read in a long time.

Silicon Valley is about money and power. Ideals, apart from "ideals" packed into cheesy marketing slogans, just don't play into that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe we should all start running a script that browses random websites at random times. Seems to me that would go a long ways towards making the data collected about as valuable as a magic 8 ball. It would be even better if such a script could actually look at my real browsing history and try to generate the most confusing anti-traffic. If I search for cats it searches for dogs and birds. If I check the weather for zip code X it checks it for zip code Y and Z.

<comment><USER13> Similarly, why not have an open wifi guest network? My neighbors can use it, my friends can use it, my mail man could use it. Having a secure connection just proves YOU are the one responsible for the browsing at hand. I agree, adding random browsing completely screws the game for people that snoop.

<comment><USER14> If people use it for illegal things, your ISP can solve the problem by denying you service even if you're not held legally responsible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ajit Pai's career is the canonical example of revolving door crony capitalism and regulatory capture. His career is dedicated to using the US government to transfer wealth from the public to Verizon.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Varadaraj_Pai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Varadaraj_Pai)

</comment><comment><USER16> I hope this is the beginning of a process that will improve this situation in the future.

Not a long time ago people were completely ignorant about this subject. As companies started to take advantage and abuse the lack of awareness of general people they started to do it more broadly and publicly.

Now the idea of lack of privacy is starting to get out on the streets and make people more aware of the problem.

At some point we will be able to turn the table and a strict legislation around privacy will be put in place.

Things are going to improve, but they still need to get worse, before.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am assuming with all the money made selling all this private data, ISPs are going to be slashing consumer broadband rates across the US and building better infrastructure!

Cheaper faster internet for all in the USA!

Wait, they don't have to lower rates, I'll go to the one of the other many ISP options I have...

Oh wait..

</comment><comment><USER18> I do not understand. I thought that in the current climate, where people are becoming increasingly aware and concerned about privacy, that such laws would be expanded in scope. But here, the law is being repealed.

Additionally, I find the implications of this kind of admission to be astonishing: _Last year, the Federal Communications Commission pushed through, on a party-line vote, privacy regulations designed to benefit one group of favoured companies over another group of disfavoured companies_. That's a pretty huge statement, made in a business-as-usual kind of way, that calls into question the overall integrity of the FCC.

<comment><USER19> The FCC is full of sincere people who want to do the right thing for the public interest. This move comes from above the FCC.

<comment><USER20> Ajit Pai, the chairman of the FCC, is not doing anything for the public interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Worth making a shout-out to the independent ISPs that opposed the change (including the Bay Area's own MonkeyBrains & Sonic).

If you're lucky enough to have one, support your local ISP!

[https://twitter.com/monkeybrainsnet/status/84658580913846272...](https://twitter.com/monkeybrainsnet/status/846585809138462720)

</comment><comment><USER22> If anyone in Portland, OR is looking for an ISP that will respect your privacy, you might try reaching out to Stephouse ([https://www.stephouse.net/](https://www.stephouse.net/)).

I recently switched to them from Comcast, and this news makes me all the happier that I did.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am reminded of a conversation with a Russian-born Valley-based venture capitalist. I asked why Silicon Valley seems less politically organized, and thus influential, at the grassroots level than New York City.

"New York is closer to D.C.," she observed. But that doesn't explain why the average person from Silicon Valley has less influence than, say, from Los Angeles.

We're Alan Turings, she said. Turing wanted to be left alone to make things. Unfortunately, his government didn't see similarly. First, with World War II and later by prosecuting him for his sexual orientation. Being able to be left alone to make things is a luxury, a delicate balance almost unprecedented across human history.

We will lose the privilege if we refuse to defend it. Please donate to the EFF [1] or the ACLU [2]. Call your Congressperson [3] and Senator [4]. Get to know their aides. Let your Attorney General [5] know you care about this.

[1] [https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate)

[2] [https://action.aclu.org/secure/protect-rights-freedoms-we- be...](https://action.aclu.org/secure/protect-rights-freedoms-we- believe-8?s_src=UNW170001SEM&alt_src=UNV170001SEM&ms=gad_SEM_Bing_Search- Trump_ACLU%20Donate_ACLU%20donate_e_78202766912903)

[3] [http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/](http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/)

[4] [https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/](https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/)

[5] [https://oag.ca.gov/contact](https://oag.ca.gov/contact)

 _Note: this comment recapitulates an earlier one [I]

[I] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13963777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13963777) _

</comment><comment><USER24> Ask your ISP. Show them this matters to you, enough to cancel your contract. I asked mine (PAXIO in the Bay Area) and they said they have no plans to sell any customer data.

<comment><USER25> The problem with America is there is no competition in most areas. When there is it's usually just two big providers you're stuck picking between and they will both tell you to sod off. If this were many other parts of the world that have dealt with the monopoly problem correctly, by splitting the provision of wholesale last mile service from the retail ISP service there could be a market overnight for ISPs that respect your privacy. But we don't have that. We have a vertical monopoly. That means we need regulation to protect consumers. But now we can't rely on regulation either.

<comment><USER26> Good thing all these pro-business republicans are all about competition and marketplaces! /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So, ISP's can sell your data now. The few who use VPN's or other methods to obfuscate/hide their data are a rounding error, big ISP won't care at all because the barrier to entry is at the moment much more complex than installing an adblocker, not to mention, the immediate impact is not so apparent to the average user.

What gets me, in the world we live in data is king, now that the ISP's can use this data, surely they could sell it, but what's stopping them from looking at googles throne?

Google at the moment leverages the data they gather from their services, but your ISP has _everything_

Am I missing something here, or does the endgame look like the issue will be what ISPs choose to do with this data in house rather than out of it.

Not to mention, do they also no longer need to disclose when they suffer a data breach or am I mis-remembering?

All this together looks like it ends with gross oversteps in the use of data by your ISP, not to mention they will do the [three letter agency of choice]'s job for them, all they need to do is find a way in.

<comment><USER28> > Google at the moment leverages the data they gather from their services, but > your ISP has _everything_

...which is surely part of the reason Google is pushing so hard to encrypt everything.

(I'm not saying there aren't altruistic reasons too.)

<comment><USER29> If there would be altruistic reasons, Google would push for end to end encryption - however they try very hard to be the man in the middle - <USER2> at your searches, mail, location, everything.

And they make it worthwhile for you to give them data because they pay in features - Gmail search works beautifully, just try web Outlook to see how hard is to get it right; maps works so well that I can't even name a competitor.

What benefit will consumers get from ISP sharing their data? None, obviously.

<comment><USER30> Google does push for end to end encryption. And why should they try to be the man in the middle when they are the man at the end anyway?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can we not just have some representatives browser history leak and blame it on this?

</comment><comment><USER32> Dane Jasper, ceo at Sonic in the bay area has a good track record around privacy...so far...[https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/category/privacy/](https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/category/privacy/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Can states enact their own law? California maybe?

<comment><USER34> This might be deemed a federal matter, as it involves transactions across state lines.

<comment><USER35> I think it's possible, for example, this seems to be in a related area:

[https://consumercal.org/about-cfc/cfc-education- foundation/c...](https://consumercal.org/about-cfc/cfc-education- foundation/california-online-privacy-protection-act-caloppa-3/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> May be a good time to reconsider that move abroad. There are quite a bunch of places that still cherish privacy or don't even bother about privacy (so you run your own infrastructure as you like), while you still get to conduct your business reliably. With an Internet connection and a few good bank accounts (and of course a BTC wallet), you can be anywhere these days and still accomplish so much. But you must be willing to be quite flexible about your worldview and learn.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think there is a hope in free software companies. I am working at one nowadays and we are breaking the law almoust daily and get sued with similar frequency. Now we are installing Lye transmitters into any village which is interested communicating via satelite to bring the internet there. Becoming your own ISP solves the problem right? If we see increase in such behaviour the problem might disappear. Because the future is distributed

<comment><USER38> Would you mind sharing which company by the way? What you posted is really interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Seems like one could write a program that continuously (with some sleeping of course) hit random websites in the background. This would hide the "signal" of the sites one is actually browsing. The ISP's data would be much less valuable. The solution to pollution is dilution. I wonder if an approach like that would sufficiently cloak one's data and sufficiently screw the carriers.

</comment><comment><USER40> Isn't this in conflict with the fourth amendment? Does the US constitution permit this practice?

<comment><USER41> Whether or not the constitution permits it doesn't really matter, because it's clear that nobody wants to enforce the law against Comcast or Verizon.

<comment><USER40> I was told that it can matter if the practice is challenged in court

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Where is the anger the article refers to? Literally none of the big tech executives who have a voice have spoken up about this. I am not sure we minions count for anything anymore.

</comment><comment><USER43> Honestly, it is for the good. Let it burn. I am hoping for a phoenix.

I met a guy who started a bakery instead of a web startup as he was worried about patent trolls & being bullied by the big companies.

The internet is today over commercialized and it cannot be relied on for accurate information thanks to fake news.

I am reminded of a quote by Jeff Hammerbacher: 'The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads… That sucks.'.

</comment><comment><USER38> I am waiting for the day a cheery Russian teenager leaks all of the browsing history of several USA senators.

Nothing motivates politicians more than them being directly affected.

As ironically amusing such a story would be, I don't think they'll draw the right conclusion however. They'll probably push for more laws "against terrorism" and will not see such an accident as a proof of how much of a slippery slope the killing of internet privacy is.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have a question. Right now I'm using a cheap $3.49 VPS and it is located in Beauharnois, Canada. How are the privacy laws in Canada? Better than US or worse? Is there anything else I should know?

PS/PSA: It was the best value with unlimited internet I could find. It was the cheapest option from OVH. Cheapest, considering I wouldn't have to worry that the company would shut down. Latency isn't terrible actually.

<comment><USER45> You should assume that every thing that happens in the US is happening in Canada. As a member of the Five Eyes, the G7, and G8, our policies are closely linked.

I believe that Canada's ISPs might have stricter data protection laws, but really you should have been using a VPN well before this latest policy change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> If you have some ssh server somewhere (who hasn't), you can very easily use 'VPN over ssh' by calling:

sshuttle -r user@remote_host 0.0.0.0/0 --dns

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't use it myself, but could the technology behind the tor network [1] (or the product itself) be used to counter this?

1) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_\(anonymity_network\))

<comment><USER44> Yes it can be used, but beware, your ISP WILL know that you are using Tor, so there's that.

<comment><USER48> They'll know you're using a VPN too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The only difference between allowing the postal and waste industries inspect what they are hired to deliver, log and sell those logs to whoever pays and allowing the Internet pipe industry from doing it is that it's much cheaper for the Internet pipe business to do so.

</comment><comment><USER23> Were there any ISPs who did not, if not fight the measure, not overtly support it? Wireless carriers?

</comment><comment><USER50> But why should Google be allowed to share your data but not ISPs? Not that I love this move but the reasoning does resonate, or at least make me question if the former law really did anything at all or if FB/Google lobbied it through to stifle competition.

<comment><USER51> 1) Yes, Google has a lot of services, but you can avoid them. Admittedly it's challenging but it's doable. For many Americans, choosing a different ISP isn't "challenging" so much as "impossible".

2) Google doesn't sell your data to third parties. This is a big one. They make money by showing you ads and reporting to the advertisers that they did it. Nobody else gets access to your data, and Google goes to great lengths to lock it down and prevent unauthorized access. Do you trust every company your ISP will sell the data to?

3) Google itself has ways to opt out temporarily for highly sensitive things, like with an incognito window. Can't do that with an ISP.

4) You generate a lot of traffic that Google has nothing to do with. Do you have an iPhone? Do you use a laptop other than a chrome book? Have a gaming console? Use a non-chrome browser? Your ISP will inhale all of this.

<comment><USER50> Great points. I'm personally tying to avoid Google services as much as possible, but I guess I was thinking in a more general context. Even so, your points still stand. (Small obligatory remark: incognito is entirely client side.)

The silver lining might be, considering your ISP can now access your data, that maybe the culture will shift and people will take online privacy a little more seriously, both applicastion and services providers and users. Maybe people will stop sending user analytics in plain text all the time. Maybe people will expect tls everywhere. Maybe a layer 3.5 overnet will emerge..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I asked this is in the other thread on this topic, when did the Obama-era rules emerge? If anyone has the bill info that would be ideal. I've been trying to find stuff on google but it's flooded with the current news.

<comment><USER53> 2015-03-12. This is rolled into the FCC's implementation of net neutrality. (wileyrein.com/newsroom-articles-3501.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> So what's the best VPN that doesn't store or sell their user data?

Surely a new business opportunity if there isn't one good enough to recommend for privacy.

<comment><USER55> I like Private Internet Access. The're usually ranked pretty high by privacy advocates and they don't keep logs.

<comment><USER55> P.S. just found out about PIA's full-page ad in NYT: [https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/61ns2w/private_intern...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/61ns2w/private_internet_access_a_vpn_provider_takes_out/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Get your own VPN server. Convince your friends to get the same and just share resources with them. Mini VPN company :)

</comment><comment><USER57> Is there any hope I'll be able to find a major ISP that doesn't sell my data? (Google Fiber, I wish?)

</comment><comment><USER58> Is there a way to opt out explicitly by requesting the ISP not to share your data?

<comment><USER59> Sure. Cancel service.

Or use a VPN.

<comment> ryan-allen And hope the VPN isn't selling the data, also. Pretty bad news for everyone involved.

<comment><USER58> My ISP Comcast has the following in its privacy policy. I hope this clause stays the same - then you can opt out :)

\--- The Cable Act authorizes Comcast as a cable operator to disclose limited personally identifiable information to others, such as charities, marketing organizations, or other businesses, for cable or non-cable "mailing list" or other purposes. From time to time we may disclose your name and address for these purposes. However, you have the right to prohibit or limit this kind of disclosure by contacting us by telephone at 1-800-XFINITY or by sending us a written request as described below under "How do I contact Comcast?" Any "mailing list" and related disclosures that we may make are limited by the Cable Act to disclosures of subscriber names and addresses where the disclosures do not reveal, directly or indirectly, (i) the extent of any viewing or other use by the subscriber of a cable service or other service provided by us; or (ii) the nature of any transaction made by the subscriber over our cable system.

<comment><USER60> I wouldn't be surprised to see this quickly changed to differentiate between cable and internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Who needs privacy as long as you have guns.

<comment><USER59> But they have bigger guns, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> A great time to start using Opera browser with their free built-in VPN

[http://www.opera.com/computer/features/free- vpn](http://www.opera.com/computer/features/free-vpn)

Disclaimer: Worked at Opera ~5 years ago which is why I'm familiar but no skin in the game now.

<comment><USER62> The Opera VPN cannot be trusted. [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4fuyxf/operas_n...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4fuyxf/operas_new_baked_in_vpn_is_not_a_good_solution/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Do people actually care? Https makes only reveals the domain not the content. Google/Facebook collect way more information. Everyone keeps using them.

If given the choice of targeted ads vs an extra $30 a month I suspect most people would choose targeted ads.

Edit: remember downvote if you disagree

<comment><USER64> Difference is you can choose not to use them.

<comment><USER63> If someone chooses to use Facebook then why would they care if their ISP did something similar.

I have never been harmed by targeted ads. Maybe someday but right now they just provide a bunch of free services.

Not to be pedantic. If you don't stream video or audio then a mobile connection is a viable alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> It wasn't a law passed by Congress and signed by the president... It was a regulation. There is a difference.

<comment><USER66> What difference are you talking about? A regulation is based on law passed by Congress and signed by the president.

<comment><USER65> There is a semantic difference between a law i.e. something passed by Congress and signed by the president versus a regulation promulgated by a regulatory body. That regulatory body dervies it's power to regulate from law. But in a purely technical sense it is not a law.

<comment><USER67> There are multiple categories of things which have the force of law. Referring them generally as "laws" is acceptable when technical hair-splitting about their precise origin is unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> > will soon no longer need consent from users to share browsing history with > marketers and other third parties

This is a lie — "fake news", if you will. This congressional action cancels an upcoming change in policy: it maintains the status quo, and therefore "no longer" is not an accurate characterization of the situation.

<comment> matthew-wegner You don't know what you're talking about. The rules went into effect January 3rd: [https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-28...](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-28006/protecting- the-privacy-of-customers-of-broadband-and-other-telecommunications-services)

They used the Congressional Review Act to strike it down, which requires that it be a new federal regulation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act)

The CRA includes this, too, so the FCC can no longer do anything about it without a new law passed by Congress:

 _Once a rule is thus repealed, the CRA also prohibits the reissuing of the rule in substantially the same form or the issuing of a new rule that is substantially the same, "unless the reissued or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of the joint resolution disapproving the original rule"_

<comment><USER68> Please read your source more carefully:

> Effective January 3, 2017, _except for §§ 64.2003, 64.2004, 64.2006, and > 64.2011(b)_ which contain information collection requirements that have not > yet been approved by OMB.

The section in question in the article is 64.2004. It did not go into effect on January 3.

<comment> matthew-wegner Well, it looks like I don't know what I'm talking about.

The CRA still ensures it will never come to pass, in any form out of the FCC, and I guess the clauses on data security and breach notifications are considered acceptable collateral damage here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Meet Atlassian Stash: Git Repository Management For Enterprise Teams - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.atlassian.com/2012/05/atlassian-stash-enterprise-git-repository-management/

<comment><USER3> Okay, Atlassian, we get it. You think that GitHub is your biggest competitor. You're worried about the idea of source control being the focal point of developer productivity, because it makes issue tracking a secondary feature, and not a primary ure. And this threatens your biggest product, Jira, which is already kind of a mess to configure for source control. It's the reason why you want to own BitBucket and directly compete with Git, and it's the reason why you're adding this to your ecosystem -- so that you can own these aspects customers' projects. Customers who need source control hosting first would start with BitBucket, and customers who need it after they've project-managed and roadmapped everything in advance would realize late in the game that they need something like Stash.

It seems like trying to capture every kind of use case with a smattering of different products will ultimately be Atlassian's undoing. Yeah, you capture more of the market in total by taking this approach, but it also means that you have to maintain additional products, many of which are at odds with each other. There are so many technology businesses failed that tried to be "everything to everybody" that it's not even worth getting into here. I think they're better off identifying a strong, unified voice and promoting a single right way to handle end-to-end software productivity. But if it works for them, whatever.

<comment><USER4> They are undoing themselves quite happily with shitty products.

Yes JIRA I'm looking at you...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a current Jira user and customer, I find this announcement and the idea that they've been working on this really annoying. There are already way too many products in the Atlassian ecosystem, and the Jira product offering is like a cautionary tale for all aspiring enterprise software systems out there - slow, big, ugly, very customisable, but really tedious. I wish they would just focus on Jira, cede this idea of source control software to Github (which already has a firewall product, most people don't know this) and make everything work together really well.

My two cents.

<comment><USER6> There is also a nice price delta between the two. Stash is $9000 (currently) for 500 users/yr. GitHub Enterprise is $125,000 for 500 users/yr. That might win over some

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I work in the game industry. In the last few years I've worked on projects with Valve, EA, Blizzard, Bungie, Infinity Ward, Treyarch, id, NCSoft, etc... the list goes on and on. They all use Perforce.

Perforce is double the cost of GitHub Enterprise, at $350,000 for 500 users/yr, including their (amazing) support for when the server wont restart in the middle of the night after routine maintenance.

Regardless of how sweet their support staff is, P4 has relatively painful branching, so all of these companies who have multiple teams developing on separate branches (fairly common in companies who outsource large chunks of work), an entire engineer is dedicated to concocting epic change lists for a week at a time every time you want to merge.

GitHub Enterprise could make that issue a bit more bearable for engineers (binary files get checked in regularly, but rarely are two people branching the same binary that would need merging later) and save a nice chunk of money.

Developers would probably enjoy using a DVCS and apparently don't mind loosing an entire guy who is doing merges all day, while artists, designers, and other not-so-technical folks who also contribute to the repo would have a hard time migrating from a workflow that is ingrained from internship onward. Tech-heavy companies and those who develop solely on Mac or iOS are the rare exception.

A big problem is that Git has no concept of what Perforce calls "exclusive checkout" where only one person can claim and file and work on it. That's a deal breaker for most. Communication is hard. Make it apparent that someone has claimed a file.

Retraining users from Perforce to GitHub (however enlightened that may be) has a real cost. I would estimate thousands of dollars per employee in lost productivity. Gotta make way, way easier to start working in the git workflow, especially on Windows. All game console development happens on Windows.

Fixing the issues above could crack the entertainment industry nut (and probably many others) and likely reap some nice rewards for other groups who can't afford to switch.

<comment><USER8> > A big problem is that Git has no concept of what Perforce calls "exclusive > checkout" where only one person can claim and file and work on it. That's a > deal breaker for most. Communication is hard. Make it apparent that someone > has claimed a file.

Is this a problem particularly in the games industry for some reason? Because in "regular" development, people always think it'll be a problem before they try it. Turns out not to be, especially with the great merge support you get from git.

I could see it being an issue for binaries though. If anything, I'd expect people to balk at having to clone the entire history of large binary files, which don't typically delta-compress very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Atlassian keeps it at $10 for 1-5 users. Awesome!

And they give the source code to commercial and academic customers for customization.

Transparent pricing. They may be the least enterprisey of the enterprise vendors. :)

<comment><USER4> There will be a maintenance contract - there always is with Atlassian.

<comment><USER9> _will be_ meaning mandatory? No, there isn't.

I've downloaded and used the 5-user version of the wiki (Confluence) and I didn't pay anything more than $10. I expect this to be the same.

<comment><USER4> The moment it breaks you will need one...

<comment><USER10> The maintenance contract is another $10 for the next year (assuming you're still < 5 people). And you get software updates during that period. It's not particularly devious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone else think the naming of a product after a command used in the technology it represents seems a little strange?

See: git stash --help

</comment><comment><USER12> GitStack[1] has been quite an awesome Windows-only solution for the company I work for.

[1] <http://gitstack.com/>

<comment><USER13> Nice solution for Windows. If you're on the Linux end, there's this:

<http://gitlabhq.com/>

Which actually kinda does all the Atlassian Stash stuff for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gerrit (<http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/>) addresses some of the same problem space and comes with an awesome code review system. It also has one of the world's strangest access control systems. But it works and it's free, and the code review makes it all worth it.

</comment><comment> mh- > Stash fits into your environment and doesn't force you to use a pre-packaged > appliance which you don't have any control over.

zing.

 _(for those unaware, this is directed at GitHub's enterprise offering - <USER2> is a VM "appliance" that boots into a menu)_

</comment><comment><USER14> Gitweb + Gitolite = free & does everything this does

<comment><USER15> Gitorious. Gitlab.

<comment><USER14> Two paid services :(

<comment><USER16> Gitorious is AGPL. You can find the source code at <https://gitorious.org/gitorious/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another open source (Java-based) alternative is Gitblit <http://gitblit.com/> .</comment>


HumbledMBA acquired by 42Floors (YC W12) - <AUTHOR> http://www.humbledmba.com/humbledmba-acquired-by-42floors

<comment><USER2> I'm sure this was just a talent acquisition. As far as I can tell, HumbledMBA wasn't doing very well. I think I remember seeing an article on VentureBeat saying they had -3 daily active users.

<comment><USER3> I don't mean to be that guy, but you are not really adding anything to the discussion.

<comment><USER4> Lately, whenever a startup is acquired, there have been haters that pop up on HN to say "That was actually a failure! A mere talent acquisition!" Even if the company sold for tens of millions of dollars and had millions of users. Usually, some irrelevant and dubiously sourced metrics are included, to demonstrate just how much of a "failure" the commenter thinks the founders are.

I think that's what pg is referencing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (For the unwary / spoiler alert: HumbledMBA is Jason Freedman's personal blog, it's popular on HN, and Jason recently started 42Floors, so this is basically a startup acquisition blog post parody. Unless I'm totally missing something.)

</comment><comment><USER6> I see what you did there.

But really, great job with 42floors so far, Jason. The site is gorgeous, and I suspect the other critical moving parts of the business are equally fine- tuned. I'll be checking the new source from now on, and am looking forward to reading more great "humbled" content in the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> LOL: Can users that don't pay be called customers? hmm. Return to that thought later

<comment><USER8> I think we should call them "Revenue Evaders"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > YC W12

vs.

> all of our investors (as if)

???</comment>


The Perl 6 Coding Contest - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/nq34x/the_2011_perl_6_coding_contest/

<comment><USER2> Why post a Reddit link rather than a direct one: [http://strangelyconsistent.org/blog/the-2011-perl-6-coding-c...](http://strangelyconsistent.org/blog/the-2011-perl-6-coding- contest)

<comment><AUTHOR> my mistake, and thanks for posting the direct link.</comment></comment>


How to Bag a Hacker - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/201202/how-to-bag-a-hacker.html#

<comment><USER2> I like the way you added a # to the url so you could duplicate the same link submitted 10 minutes before you!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3503696>

<comment><AUTHOR> that was unintentional. my apologies. the submission system should be smarter.</comment></comment>


20 weirdest and pointless phone apps - <AUTHOR> http://thelightmedia.com/posts/17173-20-weirdest-and-pointless-phone-apps?user_id=15 <comment><USER2> Haha!Thanks for sharing!</comment>


Amazon's War on Statsaholic - Be Careful If Your Business Model Relies Entirely on an API from One Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/30/amazons-war-on-statsaholic/ <comment><USER2> I think it's time for Alexa to die. Their stats have always been a dangerously misleading source of data. Now they're behaving evilly too. If anyone wants to apply to YC with an idea for a replacement, we'd be excited to fund such a company.

<comment><USER3> Our submission focuses on this sort of data, but just not for all websites. We're looking to provide tracking and statistics for our target market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's pretty hard to gauge web traffic across the internet without facing selection bias problems like alexa. I'm just waiting for google to start releasing more traffic data, instead of just hoarding it. (ever wonder why/how analytics is free? Google's probably got the best web trend data in the world)

<comment><USER5> Google Analytics uses a small JavaScript (placed by the webmaster) on the page to be tracked. It's not as if Google has unfettered access to everyone's traffic data and secretly sits on it.

<comment><USER4> Well, no, obviously they don't have access to all data.

They only have traffic data for: What you search for, and in which sites you click on in the search results, everything about sites that use Google Analytics, and everything about every page that displays AdWords.

Not quite the same as Alexa, but I stand by my point.</comment></comment></comment>


With W3C captured by copyright industry, who will lead web development next? - <AUTHOR> https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/09/with-the-world-wide-web-consortium-captured-by-the-copyright-industry-who-will-step-up-to-lead-web-development-next/ <comment><USER2> Well there are IETF and WHATWG already...

Did the W3C ever really work as intended?

I guess it's fair to say that HTML5/CSS3 were mostly driven by WHATWG. HTML 2 was specified as IETF RFC 1866.

XSLT and XHTML don't seem that relevant today. XML Schema doesn't seem that relevant for the web either and probably should have been like RELAX instead.

I am not working on browser features, but I'd imagine that participating in W3C meetings could be soul crushing for actual developers -- compared to talking to colleagues from other browser vendors and cooking up an RFC together. Of course that might not be consistent with the political interests of some of the vendors...

</comment><comment><USER3> > Because there's nothing limiting this delivery channel to just a movie. In > theory, the entire web experience could be encrypted using new layers of > technology. Yes, that includes mandatory advertising. Mandatory. > Advertising. Yes, on your screen. The principal shift here, to put the media > companies in control instead of the user...

How doesn't it ring alarm bells?! I find it puzzling that so many just wave away this possible dystopia that might become the Web.

<comment><USER4> What I've been saying.

Video and audio are, in some ways, the least of your problems.</comment></comment>


Y Combinator Diaries: Installment #3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.socialbias.com/y-combinator-diaries-installment-3/

<comment><USER2> "... the absolute best way to learn about the efficacy of your product is to have people actually use it."</comment>


Xmonad 0.10 was released - <AUTHOR> http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Notable_changes_since_0.9

<comment><USER2> Installation: After you've gotten ghci and cabal from your favourite package manager, just do:

> sudo cabal install xmonad xmonad-contrib

Then you can get dmenu or dzen for a small menu and trayer for a small system tray.

Then use a premade config file from here: <http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Config_archive> and mess around with it.

To learn the keybindings, print this out or make it your wallpaper: <http://xmonad.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/xmonad-cheatsheet/>

For them ubuntu users, if oneiric broke a lot of things you can follow this: <http://markhansen.co.nz/xmonad-ubuntu-oneiric/> That should allow you to select an xmonad session as opposed to a unity one during login.

As a general rule you can simply use xmonad as your window manager and just launch gnome-settings-daemon (or was it gnome-config-daemon?) to get all the theming, font antialiasing, etc. If you run nm-applet manually, that should launch the networking stuff (if it didn't already). I haven't tried using xmonad with the ubuntu panel and stuff, so I don't know about that.

Edit: I use this one: <https://github.com/vicfryzel/xmonad-config>

It works great with multiple monitors, alt+w and alt+e move focus between monitors, and then I can swap which workspace is in which monitor really easily to move things around.

<comment><USER3> > I haven't tried using xmonad with the ubuntu panel and stuff, so I don't > know about that.

Use XMonad.Config.Gnome.gnomeConfig as your base config. Log in with gnome as normal and do:

        pkill metacity
        pkill compiz
        sleep 3
        xmonad &

Not the most elegant solution, but it works.

<comment><USER4> That worked with Gnome 2, but I'm not sure how well that will work with Gnome 3 and/or Unity. Unity is pretty tied to Compiz (some portion of it is implemented as a Compiz plugin).

At this point, it's probably easier to either create your own session script to start up the parts of Gnome that you want along with XMonad (e.g. gnome- screensaver, gnome-power-manager, etc) or to see about using XMonad as the window manager for XFCE.

Also, you used to be able to set the $WINDOW_MANAGER environment variable in ~/.gnomerc, to turn on XMonad as the window manager.

<comment><USER5> > ...create your own session script to start up the parts of Gnome that you > want along with XMonad...

On Ubuntu at least I've had success with <http://markhansen.co.nz/xmonad- ubuntu-oneiric/>

(Having the launcher floating around is annoying though, and removing it from the gnome-session file had some unpleasant side-effect that I don't remember.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm also using XMonad on Arch Linux. I found it hard to setup correctly, but once it is, it's a real productivity booster. Firing up another terminal (Meta-Shift-Enter) and not worrying about it's position is a time saver.

If you want to try it out, I can help you by reducing the time needed to set it up. My dotfiles are here: <https://github.com/wunki/wunki-dotfiles>

Best nuggets for your setup can be found in xmonad.hs, xinitrc and Xdefaults files.

<comment><USER7> The underlying design invariant was that you should always be able to predict exactly what the screen would look like, before you perform an action. I'm glad that's the result we've achieved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there an official announcement somewhere? The Xmonad blog seems dead, and the twitter account is not in a better state. It's a pitty because it gives the impression that the project is not actively developed.

<comment><USER7> There will be shortly. Sorry about the lack of noise online -- I switched jobs and cities, and haven't had time to do some of this kind of stuff. Adam Vogt has taken over as maintainer, and will be following up with an announce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you use Xmonad with GNOME 2/3 or Xfce, this panel applet/plugin can be handy: <https://github.com/alexkay/xmonad-log-applet>

(disclaimer: I'm the current maintainer)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm still sad that ion3 is getting so little love these days.

It's easily the most advanced of the tiling wm crop, and by a long shot. Just some bullets:

\- Floating/tiled can co-exist on same workspace (just attach/detach as needed), can also trivially set filters to have e.g. all dialogs and "all gimp-windows" float automatically.

\- The tabbed frames metaphor is infinitely superior to the "one window per frame" metaphor that everyone else is stuck with.

\- All configuration and extension is lua. It's an absolute joy to work with.

\- Mouse works as expected. Just drag frames to resize the grid, drag titlebars to move windows into other frames, etc.

Up to this day I don't understand how people put up with the obscure limitations of the other tiling wm's (foremost: the one window per frame constraint, forced set of layouts that never work quite right, etc. etc.)...

<comment><USER7> Most of the above list is actually supported by xmonad (and dwm, and awesome and ...). The two things that are really the defining characteristic of ion3 is that it is a user-defined layout (not a "dynamic" layout, a la xmonad), and that the clients are represented as a tree of windows, rather than e.g. a zipper or list of windows (which is how the nesting works).

xmonad and its cohort basically make the proposition that user-defined layouts are inefficient, and you can be more productive with predictable, automated tiling. They directly opposed ion3 in that regard.

Mouse, configuration, floating etc is all fairly standard everywhere.

<comment><USER10> _xmonad and its cohort basically make the proposition that user-defined layouts are inefficient_

Well, having worked with both I strongly disagree with that assumption.

Of course it's all a matter of preference but I believe there's a lot of "you don't know what you're missing when you never had it" going on. I've yet to observe an awesome|wmii|xmonad user who doesn't constantly get into fights with the WM because they can't just quickly resize or re-order a few frames in a truly predictable way.

<comment><USER11> I used ion2 for a few years. Now I've been using awesome for a few years. They're both nice. Overall, I think I prefer letting the wm arrange my windows. There are a few times where I have considered writing my own layouts, but that itch has never lasted long enough for me to scratch it.

It is too bad that ion is no longer maintained. Choice is good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My macbook died recently and I switched back to ubuntu for the week, first thing I did was install xmonad, its a really awesome environment to work within.

I do wish it played nicer with other window environment, some applications just dont work inside a modal interface and when they dont I just want my normal windows with title bar and buttons back

I havent installed it on my mac now its repaired, the fact I dont be able to use my normal mac apps kinda put me off, but I may give it another shot, if there was a way to have xmonad like behaviour with mac applications while preserving floating windows I would be in heaven (divvy etc most certainly do not count)

Its probably worth mentioning that despite following several tutorials, getting xmonad installed on 11.04 was a nightmare that left plain ubuntu pretty broken, I would like to see that process improved as well

<comment><USER4>
      >  just want my normal windows with title bar and
      > buttons back

There are contrib packages that allow you to add small title bars to the windows. You could configure XMonad with a 'floating' workspace, and enable title bars on all of the windows in that workspace. Then just setup rules to automatically send all of the programs that have issues to that workspace.

<comment><USER13> I love how a "customizable tiling window manager" somehow requires the user to learn an unusual programming language and a dozen of inscrutable keyboard shortcuts.

It made my 24inch screen at the time far more manageable but it was supremely frustrating if I sometimes wanted a certain window to remain in a certain position without being disturbed.

<comment><USER7> > "customizable tiling window manager" somehow requires the user to learn an > unusual programming language and a dozen of inscrutable keyboard shortcuts

Languages are our best tool for expressivity.

And a well-designed language is better than an ad hoc configuration language any day of the week (see e.g. vimscript for how not to do configuration).

By choosing to use a full language for configuration, we have made possible an enormous ecosystem of user-contributed components -- because the configuration language was rich enough to support them.

<comment><USER13> Horseshit! That's what APIs are for :P.

You could have accomplished all of this just fine but left the config in yaml and I would have personally been a happier person for it.

<comment><USER14> A yaml config would still be weak (this has been discussed before: [http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/xmonad/2009-February/007239...](http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/xmonad/2009-February/007239.html) )

But the nice thing about starting with a full language using the normal API is that you can always water it down to get something less powerful and easier to use, and this has been done with Xmonad before, as 'xmonad-light'. See [https://braincrater.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/announcing- xmon...](https://braincrater.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/announcing-xmonad- light/) [http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/xmonad/2008-August/006211.h...](http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/xmonad/2008-August/006211.html)

xmonad-light has no users and may be bitrotten by now, which shows how much it appealed to Xmonad users.

<comment><USER4> XMonad users by definition already know at least a minimal amount of how to create their XMonad config file. That's like saying: "We created a Linux distro for the masses and it didn't appeal to power users, therefore nobody wants it."

You're also dismissing the possibility that is just sucked, and was not an improvement in configuration interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> xmonad is uber-wonderful but a good beginner documentation would be really awesome.

I would like to have, on the official site, a list of distro, and for each, a tutorial that have been _tested and works_. Instead, one needs to hunt for blog post that are either incomplete or not applicable.

The latest Ubuntu upgrade was really a nightmare in this respect. had to mix xfce + xmonad but my setup is far from optimal...

<comment><USER16> >> xmonad is uber-wonderful but a good beginner documentation would be really awesome.

Why don't you write one? A lot of the xmonad (and other tiling wm) communities are battle scarred veterans who have been using dwm (the ancestor of xmonad, awesome et al) since day one and they don't need no stinking documentation :) And besides, one of the core ideas of dwm and (some of) it's successors is that the source code is the documentation.

So if you're a newb and would belong to the target group of the docs you're requesting, you're the perfect individual to write them.

I'm sure all the old timers on the IRC channel will be glad to help you to get started and will be even more delighted if you finish a doc.

<comment><USER17> Another one of the core ideas of dwm is "no noobs" which might explain the lack of documentation.

<comment><USER18> If true (and I'm not sure it is), that's a shame, because it essentially means new adoption is discouraged, and that's death to a project.

<comment><USER19> _Our project focuses on advanced and experienced computer users. In contrast with the usual proprietary software world or many mainstream open source projects that focus more on average and non-technical end users, we think that experienced users are mostly ignored._ \- from _Suck Less Philosophy_ at <http://suckless.org/manifest/>.

I don't feel this translates to "no noobs" as much as it means "don't stop with the noobs." I'm pretty sure inexperienced users are welcome, but there's no interest in adding hand-holding features that conflict with the philosophy of "keeping things simple, minimal and usable." I use dwm & dmenu all the time, and have developed a real appreciation for the Suck Less approach (but I'm not a newbie, so I guess I'm safely in their target audience).

<comment><USER17> dwm in particular mentions that it's elitist in order to prevent stupid questions from novices:

 _Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions. There are some distributions that provide binary packages though._

Also anyone who has ever subscribed to the suckless mailing list can testify to the elitist sentiment among many of its users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Scrotwm is a small dynamic tiling window manager for X11. It tries to stay out of the way so that valuable screen real estate can be used for much more important stuff. It has sane defaults and does not require one to learn a language to do any configuration. It was written by hackers for hackers and it strives to be small, compact and fast.

It was largely inspired by xmonad and dwm. Both are fine products but suffer from things like: crazy-unportable-language-syndrome, silly defaults, asymmetrical window layout, "how hard can it be?" and good old NIH. Nevertheless dwm was a phenomenal resource and many good ideas and code was borrowed from it. On the other hand xmonad has great defaults, key bindings and xinerama support but is crippled by not being written in C.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is there a compelling reason for somebody already using Awesome WM to look into Xmonad? Seems like I'm hearing about it more often these days.

<comment><USER22> I am an Xmonad user that tried Awesome, and the main thing that didn't work for me is that it seemed that Awesome workspaces (tags) were tied to particular monitors. Perhaps I just didn't take the time to figure out how to do it properly, but that was a deal-breaker for me.

In Xmonad, I have configured twenty different workspaces, and I can easily swap them in and out of any given monitor. With a triple-monitor configuration, this is quite handy.

<comment><USER23> That's what did it for me too. I'm sure there is a way in awesome to do it but its not as easy as xmonad.

Xmonad seems to not get in the way as much as awesome. For my purposes xmonad is just a lot simpler, but I am sure I am barely scratching the surface feature wise.

A lot of the awesome docs/screenshots reminded me of enlightenment-porn back when e17 seemed like vaporware. I don't need crazy graphs/apps/eye-candy just help me arrange organize my windows and go away.

<comment><USER24> The crazy stuff doesn't come with a base awesome install, that's stuff people added on their own. The base install looks like this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Awesome_screenshot.png>

XMonad _is_ simpler, since awesome comes with a taskbar, system tray, and clock by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> been using xmonad for a couple of years. config is so minimal that it makes it vey simple to replicate the exact same environment on all my machines (laptops and desktops), with no ties to the underlying linux distribution.

</comment><comment><USER18> Anybody have a link to some good screenshots of Xmonad 0.10?

<comment><USER26> <http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Screenshots>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wish I could replace my osx window manager by xmonad =_)

</comment><comment><USER28> I'll go tell my coworker. He's the _one industry programmer who gives a shit about Haskell_.

<comment><USER28> Looks like someone missed the reference:

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell- researchers-...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell-researchers- announce-discovery.html)

<comment><USER29> Providing a reference for your joke doesn't really change much. I don't think you were downvoted because anyone thought your comment need citations, or because they weren't sure if it was actually supposed to be a joke.

Perhaps it was just a bit trite, and/or irrelevant.

<comment><USER28> So would you say that the same goes for Steve's article --which makes exactly the same point?</comment></comment></comment></comment>